Hoppers Hands: Saying goodbye to San Francisco

It could be my last run here; I went out for a run today, just a few days before we leave San Francisco, to go and pay homage to "Hoppers Hands". It's what runners do. But today was more significant than just a run. Today was pivotal. My injury is fading into the distance and rehab is my main focus now. Every day I'm pushing, pushing, pushing. Powered by painkillers and accompanied by winces and grimaces, I'm trying to regain fitness and strength. I can't go at it like a bull in a china shop though, or I'll end up injured and I'll have to back off. So it's a balance: push hard enough to make it count, but not so hard as to make it break down. Pain is a decent controller, but isn't everything. I can do rowing at a decent rate now, but I can't pull a flexibility band (those big rubber band thingies with handles on that nobody uses). I can do a bicep curl with 15 pound dumbells but I can't push a shoulder press through thin air! I'm not sure what other gym-goers are thinking as I happily do the bicep curl while watching the TV, then grunt, groan and grimace my way through an arm movement with no strings (or weights) attached!

There's nothing like taking something away to make you love it even more, and my running has been taken away until recently. My collarbone is fixing nicely, but aches a lot particularly after any jarring, so running was difficult. I couldn't do any at all for about 4 weeks - 2 weeks before and then 2 weeks after the surgery. I had to delay the surgery so I could come back to the UK in July, so there was some collatoral damage involved in the surgery and that gave me a lot of bruising and trouble with ligaments and other similar bits. 2 weeks after the surgery I got the OK to start training again and went straight onto the treadmill the same day. 15 minutes at 9 minute per mile pace had me in serious
trouble. It was difficult to see how I would ever be an athlete again. A couple of days ago, though, and I achieved a target I had set, of doing a 10K on the San Francisco Giants (the baseball team) sports day. It hurt a lot, the pace was slow, but I did it. The reaction wasn't too bad, and I got the confidence to do another - slightly longer run - today. Thinking I might not be running here again, I thought "I've just got to do Hoppers Hands". The last time I did Hoppers Hands was when I went out with the Golden Gate Run Club, so it seemed appropriate. Hoppers Hands are down by the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. All runners go up to the fence, do a high-five or fist-bump (I've learned to do both while I've been over here but don't for God's sake tell Chris) and off they go. There's been a fair bit of mystery about Hoppers Hands over the years, but that's mostly been b**locks. There is no mystery, Hopper's Hands are a copy of the hands of - yes, you've guessed it - a guy called Hopper. Ken Hopper. He was a bridge worker for a good many years, and used to see runners come up to the fence, touch it, and turn round. We've all done it: the "out and back". Here, I've been doing a run to AT&T Park (Home of the San Francisco Giants) and back. All the way there, touch the statue to a player that I can never remember the name of despite touching it a thousand times, and back again.
Go in the other direction along The Embarcadero, and if you go far enough - about 4 miles from my
 apartment here (yes Chris, I know its a flat not an apartment!) - you get to the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's an interesting spot. You are at Fort Point, the old, original fort built way before the bridge back in 1850, to safeguard all this area (look at a map - there is no better strategic point for a fort) and you are at the foot of the bridge so you really do get a fabulous perspective of the scale of the thing. This makes it a natural destination for an out and back run, and that's what Ken used to see a lot of. There's a wire fence that stops you going round any further, along the rocks and under the bridge itself. Touch the wire fence and turn back. Ken would watch it and think: "what a shame they don't have something to mark it" and so he put up a pair of wooden hands for the runners to touch. He didn't think of them as "Hoppers Hands" - they were just a marker. Anyway, it all got very popular and one of his workmates put up a sign saying "Hoppers Hands" and later still, they actually traced round Ken's hands for the wooden version.

So my run was good, I felt OK, and I was enjoying every single second of it. I felt privileged to be able to do it; I certainly felt lucky. The accident might have taken me out of action for a few weeks but here I am. Back, and hungry for more. I gazed out at Alcatraz, and thought of my swim from there; I gazed at the city with the Transamerica building dominating the skyline and thought of all my work here; I gazed at Crissy Fields and thought of all the pioneering flights done from here; I gazed at the Pacific Ocean and the windsurfers, kayakers, and kiteboarders all out there enjoying themselves. It all felt very special. I'm not sad to be leaving, I'm looking forward to coming home, but it has been great here, and we've done so much. As I got to the bridge I looked up at the vast span 300 feet up, and felt in awe of its size and scale. I imagined what it must have been like working on it. A small number of men died making it (about 10 I think), which for a project of its size and ambition really is small. But a larger number of men became members of a very exclusive club called the "Halfway to Hell" club. The "Halfway to Hell" club was for those that had fallen but were captured by the safety netting and survived.

I gave the hands a high-five, and set off for home feeling very, very happy with life. By the way, did I mention that Ken Hopper had talked over 30 suicide attempts down off the bridge? Special guy, our Ken.

Living with the drugs debate

I watched the German TV/ Sunday Times drugs in sport documentary:

Doping - Top Secret: The Shadowy World of Athletics.  

with an increasingly sad heart. Most of my "grown-up" sporting experience has been against a backdrop of performance-enhancing drug use in professional sport. The sports I love include cycling and athletics, and more recently triathlon, so as endurance sports, performance-enhancing drugs have always been a part of the scene. It used be interesting, almost amusing. In cycling there's a well-known statement by 5-times Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil that: "I only take drugs when it's absolutely necessary." "And how often is that?" "Almost all the time." The Anquetil cocktail was a heady mix of heroine, speed, painkillers and other drugs. Anquetil was a character in the sport, loved by most, and the drug use was just a part of the deal. Every one did it, and without much subtlety.  In the same era of cycling a famous British rider of the time, Tommy Simpson, died while riding on the Mont Ventoux. His pockets contained vials of amphetamines and his bloodstream was found to have alcohol in it. His autobiography reveals how he was born into relative poverty, and used his bike racing as a means to get out of that. That was a constant theme within cycling, which used to be regarded as a very working class sport. Its very much the same now with football, and with some areas of athletics which is one reason why there are so many top-level African distance runners. Coming into sport as a means of earning a living for yourself and often for your entire extended family, predisposes any athlete towards a "win at any cost" mentality, of which drug use is a major part. Simpson was known to everyone as Mr Tom, and was ambitious in his personal life, as well as his cycling career.  He had told everyone before the fateful race that he wanted a win in order to buy a particular, expensive Mercedes car. The rumour was that he'd put a deposit down on it. But winning at that time meant taking performance enhancing drugs, particularly amphetamines. One of the worst aspects of this is how little was known, certainly by the cyclists, of the effects both positive and negative. It's easy to look back now, and see that amphetamines, alcohol, dehydration and excessive heat would cause massive problems. But back then they didn't know. Simpson was pretty much a victim of his time,  and it is probably for this reason that he is generally revered and honoured.  I don't think that I have ever seen any criticism of Simpson and his doping. When I first started watching the Tour de France, knowing that some - if not all - of the riders were doping, didn't really detract from my enjoyment. I used to love watching the Colombians attacking the mountains, and the likes of Pedro Delgado, and later on Marco Pantani, taking on some of France's most feared climbs. It was only later, as I started to take the sport more seriously, that I started to get concerned about drug use and feel that it detracted from the sport.

Reading the Paul Kimmage book "Rough Ride" back in the 80s made me realise the dangers involved, the pressure put on the riders by their teams and sponsors, and just how widespread the practice was. Kimmage described how he had to dope just to get through the round of criterium races that he was contracted to do. Not in order to win, just to survive them. Then came a couple of high-profile busts, culminating with the Festina affair in 1999, where one of the soigneurs  of the team was found with a well-stocked pharmacy in his car. I began to lose faith in my cycling heroes and in my sport. Up till that point, I'd assumed it was pretty well a cycling phenomena, but then one of my athletic heroines, Diane Modal, got busted. I believed her story; I defended her at every opportunity; and I genuinely thought it would all turn out to be a big mistake. In my minds eye, I can still see the moment on TV when she was pulled out of a race. I can still see the shock on her face. To this day, I probably still believe she was innocent, and she was cleared on appeal. But now, unlike then, I have doubts. The last decade has seen many, many of my sporting heroes "popped" for drugs. (The fact that they use phrases like "popped", meaning arrested, and "glowing", meaning their blood still has detectable traces of doping substance in it, just demonstrates to me how much of a game the whole process seems to be.) The more I read about the subject, the more I understand how it was, essentially a process of outwitting the testers - not difficult, by all accounts. The worst of course, was being taken in by Armstrong, and when he confessed it eroded a fundamental part of why I love sport.  As a result of that, I can't imagine  that I will ever love sport so unquestioningly again.

In 2015 drugs are part of the everyday story of sport - all sport. We have suspicion everywhere, convicted drugs cheats that have served their time and are returning to the sport, and the knowledge that the authorities are at the very least, turning a blind eye, if not actually complicit. So it's against this background that I watched this documentary. It reveals some shocking information about blood doping, the IAAF, WADA, and other sporting authorities. Leaked information shows the number of abnormal blood tests recorded by athletes to be phenomenally high, and dangerously so. I find it impossible to believe that the IAAF, having access to this information, did nothing about it, but when you hear a top Kenyan marathon runner (Rita Jeptoo, now banned for two years) tell how she wasn't tested for 9 years - 9 years! - despite her profile and results, it says a lot about how lax the whole process is. Seb Coe, who I respect enormously, has fallen into the trap of attacking the documentary. Sorry Seb, but you are missing the point. It doesn't matter if they shouldn't have the file; it doesn't matter if you think it's sensationalist; it doesn't even matter if they have drawn wrong conclusions: what matters is that there is a huge public feeling on this, and attacking the messenger will not fix the problem.

My favourite sports, which all tend to be endurance based, are all in danger.  The public at large  are hugely sceptical, as are many of my sporting friends. Many of them think I'm just naive, still believing - or maybe just hoping - that there are a large number clean athletes out there. Whether I'm right or wrong, something that I have observed quite recently is an acceptance that drugs are part of sport. I'm not saying that they condone it, but they certainly accept that it's there, and they are much less disappointed when they discover an athlete is doping. I loved watching the 2015 Tour de France recently, which I believe was one of the best races in years, but I had to constantly defend Chris Froome. I believe he is clean, but most of my friends believe he's on drugs. I have read his autobiography recently, and two things stand out to me: firstly the dedication and commitment to his training and cycling in order to get into the sport; and secondly he is absolutely outspoken in his opposition to drugtaking in sport. Whether I am wrong or right about Froome, it is a sad fact that this debate will be repeated across all endurance sports and across all the world. We now have convicted drugs cheats return to sport in athletics, cycling and other disciplines. One shining light amongst this is that the world of triathlon firmly rebutted Armstrong's efforts to get into that sport, a stance that I support 100%. Elsewhere though, Justin Gatlin who will be competing against Usain Bolt in the forthcoming World Championships. Gatlin  was caught, convicted, and banned for two years. He has now served those two years, and he's back in the sport that he showed so little respect for. If he beats Bolt, who as far as we know is clean, how do we deal with that? I'm not sure I can.

Quite apart from the sporting element of all of this, there is the danger to health and to life, which the sporting authorities should be addressing. From Tommy Simpson in the 60s, and numerous continental cyclists and other athletes in the intervening years, many have put their health at risk by chasing results. It is bad enough if they know the risks, but I would suggest that mostly they don't; even if they did know there were risks, it is unlikely that they knew how big these risks were. In the early days of EPO, a number of professional cyclists died in their sleep as their hearts simply stopped beating because of the thickness of their blood. The top professional teams took to waking their riders up in the middle of the night and making them run through the corridors of their hotels in order to keep their blood viscous enough for the heart to pump it. They did not stop taking EPO. In the German documentary, one of the scientists - a world-renowned blood specialist - expresses horror at the levels of blood doping witnessed in the files that he was given access to showing the blood tests of top athletes over a period of 11 years. His horror was based on the damage and risk to health of blood contaminated to such a degree.

There is too much evidence, from the  "blind eye"  shown to 1960s cyclists, through the whole of the Armstrong era to now, that drugs testing is inadequate and the authorities inattentive. There will always be some athletes who will cheat, and there will always be athletes tempted by the money or the glory but if we're going to continue to enjoy sport then we have to continue to believe in the athletes who make up that sport.  For that to happen, we have to take this seriously and we have to force the authorities to do the same. As long as we simply play at this game we will continue to be riddled with suspicion, disbelief and disillusionment. And ultimately that will kill top-level endurance sport.

A short rant

Yesterday I should have been competing at the USA National Triathlon Championships. I worked hard to qualify for those, but then I went and smashed myself up in a big bike crash. So yesterday, I was nursing my pinned collar bone and my sore ribs. I moaned at the time that I would have been boarding the plane, the time I would have been landing and the time I would have been going to bed in Milwaukee. I woke up in the middle on the night (the time shift between here in SF and Milwaukee is 3 hours), when I would have been setting off from the hotel to go and rack my bike. I moaned when the race started and I watched the live feed from the finish, still moaning. I moaned when the times for my age group were posted.

I shudda been there. I'm not happy. I know athletes get injured, and I know they miss big races. That's life. I know that. It still hurts though. Instead of what I should have been doing I went to the gym and did some rehab. That hurt too, but not as much as missing the Nationals. 

Recovering

I had the operation to pin my collarbone last Friday. It went well, but the pain I suffered on Saturday was practically intolerable. As it had been three weeks since the initial break, the break had healed reasonably well, which would be good news under most circumstances. However, since I was going to have it reset all that had to be reversed. I think it was the reversal process (breaking it all apart again) caused the pain that I was suffering on Saturday. Now, three days later, that part of the pain seems to be gone, leaving me with just the pain associated with the healing process. The "opening" where the surgeon went in has been stitched up and to be honest, it looks like a shark attack - micro-surgery this ain't! I don't want to post a picture of it; it's altogether too grim.

I've had plenty of time to think over the last three days, and I still feel the same about racing as I did when I first had the accident. That is, that I don't feel able to give 100% any more. It isn't just about the accident, it's the whole thing: planning, training, racing. Sometime in the last month I saw an interview with a rider about his retirement. For the life of me I can't remember who it was, but he was talking about the moment when he knew he wanted to retire. He said something like: "you know when it's time to stop; the burning within you is no longer there. The complete desire to win at all costs is no longer there." And when I heard that, I knew. Everything revolves around the word "complete". Sure, there is a desire; but the desire isn't total, it isn't absolute. That doesn't mean, however, that I want to give up entirely. I read an interesting story about US Secretary of State John Kerry recently, that resonated with my situation more than I would have ever expected with a member of the United States Government. Kerry is a cyclist. He is also the man who is negotiating with Iran about their nuclear capability. During the negotiations,  (And I don't mean here, that he said to President Ahmardinijad: "hold that thought; I'm just popping out for a ride on my bike" -  I assume there was a natural break in the negotiations, where he took advantage of the gap to go for a ride). He was out on his bike when he crashed and broke his leg.

He was flown back to the US to undergo surgery, and it's amusing to think of the conversation he would have had with his wife. She'd be saying: "so are you going to give up the silliness now?" He is, after all, 70 years' old. And he would no doubt promise that would be the case. But I don't suppose he wants to give up either.
In the midst of all my angst over whether I should or whether I shouldn't, I had a call with the guy who helped me just after the crash. It was somewhat eerie getting his perspective. He said that after I went past him at the top of the climb I just disappeared and he couldn't believe how quickly I shot down the other side and out of sight. He described how, just before the bend where I crashed he'd wondered if I'd gone down, and then dismissed the thought as ridiculous. Talking to him was like putting pieces back together. I didn't know how long I'd been down, but he said he thought only a few seconds, and that I was already trying to get up when he saw me. He pretty well confirmed that I hadn't lost consciousness, as he said that I was lucid as soon as he spoke to me. So between his perspective and mine we were able to piece together all the crash and its aftermath. I feel better about that. As we spoke I was beginning to talk about riding again, and he mentioned my racing, suggesting that I might return stronger than before. I was intrigued by that statement, since he doesn't really know me very well, but did he garner that from my conversation? I don't know, but it was good to talk to him and get another view. I'm still not concluding what the future holds, and I've still got conflicting feelings, but I feel more balanced now. Time, as they say, is the great healer.